Biokyra

Monday, October 21, 2013

Since the 2008
crisis that took place mainly in the United States and Europe, it’s been said a
lot about the opportunities in emerging countries. But one shall be careful
when analyzing these markets and try to evaluate its potential as objectively
as possible.

When it comes about Brazil and the
medical device industry, some challenges one may face when trying to approach
this market. Some of them are the bureaucracy, strong regulatory system added
to long timelines and delays, high taxes and a structure that varies according
to the product which makes hard to know in advance how much the price will be
for the final customer.

However, when you overcome the language
and the cultural barriers, it is all worthwhile because Brazil is a huge
market, with more than 190 million people, a large public healthcare system
which represents 4.1% of its GDP, a US$4 billion in imports and US$700 million
in exports of medical devices.

Monday, October 7, 2013

Calico will be a new company focused on “health and
wellbeing, in particular the challenge of aging and associated diseases”, says
the company CEO and co-founder Larry Page in a Google+ post. He goes on in a
press statement arguing that, even though the healthcare sector is a lot
different from what Google does today, he believes that his company can
“improve millions of lives”.

Google hasn’t released any specific plans or
projects yet, but to keep the shareholders from worrying, Page says that these
investments are very small in comparison to Google’s core business. This is
Google’s second effort in the healthcare and biotechnology industry. Google
Health was an attempt to store patient medical records online and it was
abandoned because of privacy concerns. Besides, app developers in Google were
also focused on others projects like Google Glass.